How to format your references using the Basic and Applied Ecology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Basic and Applied Ecology. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Smetacek, V. (2002). Microbial food webs. The ocean’s veil. Nature, 419(6907), 565.

A journal article with 2 authors

Li, X., & Yang, Y. (2014). A novel perspective on seed yield of broad bean (Vicia faba L.): differences resulting from pod characteristics. Scientific Reports, 4, 6859.

A journal article with 3 authors

Li, L., Wang, H., & Zhao, X. (2014). Effects of Rhodiola on production, health and gut development of broilers reared at high altitude in Tibet. Scientific Reports, 4, 7166.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Governato, F., Brook, C., Mayer, L., Brooks, A., Rhee, G., Wadsley, J., Jonsson, P., Willman, B., Stinson, G., Quinn, T., & Madau, P. (2010). Bulgeless dwarf galaxies and dark matter cores from supernova-driven outflows. Nature, 463(7278), 203–206.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Featherstone, H., & Holt, E. (2011). Small Animal Ophthalmology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Pelliccione, M. (2008). Evolution of Thin Film Morphology: Modeling and Simulations (T.-M. Lu, Ed.; Vol. 108). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Doran, B. J., & Burgess, M. B. (2012). Managing Fear of Crime. In M. B. Burgess (Ed.), Putting Fear of Crime on the Map: Investigating Perceptions of Crime Using Geographic Information Systems (pp. 51–65). Springer.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Basic and Applied Ecology.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. (2015, November 14). What Is A White Hole? IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/physics/what-white-hole/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. (1979). Release of Carson City Silver Dollar Bidders List (LCD-79-106). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Darko-Mensah, K. (2019). Application of Data Envelopment Analysis to Measure the Online Outsourcing Efficiency of Sub-Saharan African Countries [Doctoral dissertation]. George Washington University.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Dominus, S. (2016, January 19). Make ‘Em Laugh. New York Times, MM38.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Smetacek, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Li & Yang, 2014; Smetacek, 2002).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Li & Yang, 2014)
Three authors: (Li et al., 2014)
6 or more authors: (Governato et al., 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Basic and Applied Ecology
Abbreviation	Basic Appl. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	1439-1791
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics